


atlantis

by grandstander



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 15:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14287452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandstander/pseuds/grandstander
Summary: never once have i loved in joy, in peace, in freedom.all that i have loved, i loved in great sorrow and tragedy.or— "tragedy does not care for the plight of lovers."





	atlantis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nequas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nequas/gifts).



> i come baring gifts of angst and garen breaking as a man and losing what remains of his heart! i am suffering! 
> 
> i wrote this on my garen blog because my darius rp partner also wrote an alternative of garen dying to darius. it was really, really good and i do not regret the two and a half days or so i spent working on this. the companion piece to this one that my rp partner wrote is "pompeii" by nequas here on ao3! 
> 
> im actually very proud of this but im definitely writing some fluff here soon too cause my boys make me sad as fuck in main verse 
> 
> i hope you enjoy this! i worked really, really hard on it.

Fate’s hand is cruel, and the cruelest vessel of her tragedy was perhaps the heart. For all that Garen had made himself to be, for all that he built himself out of ( steel, bone, blood, loyalty, perseverance, stone ), he was not _infallible_. As much as he tried to be, as much as he built himself for his people, for his nation, he cannot abandon his shackles of personhood. It is his greatest strength and his greatest folly. It is **damning**.

He wrapped himself in armor and cast his heart in steel, and in the end it is still torn from his chest and crushed. Liquid gold still found its way into his veins and a river of blood seeped through his pores to his heart. Garen _loved_ despite all his walls and all his metal, and for it he is left as empty as death.

The first crack is **vicious**. It is merciless. It is disgusting.

 

 

Garen doesn’t feel a back against his own and that is the first thing that makes him worry. A great beast of fear rears in his shadow while there is no one there to fill it, born from past faults and grief. His shadow feels like tar dripping from his ankles while his demons begin to thrive in it.

Jarvan was always there— he was _supposed_ to be there. Despite all that he had endured, even though Noxus had sank its claws into him and ran Jarvan down to only his bones and his soul, he had still returned. His best friend, a valve of his heart, his first love had still returned to him. Garen would have kissed the hand of whatever divine will had guided his prince home, he would have wept at their feet, and above all he would beg forgiveness while pledging himself anew ( the last he did so silently with only the gods as his witness ). Jarvan’s return had been his second chance and a rebirth with resolve made from unyielding steel.

When the Might steps back and does not feel a familiar body against the back of his own, his soul pools like a shallow puddle of water at the soles of his feet. The very real possibility that he has forsaken his charge sets in while the panic and heartbreak of his youth whips his back violently as a reminder of his penance. He was ravaged from within, like a raging sea thrashed in his core, an ill tide crashing against his ribs as he turns to look behind him, searching wildly for the man he so cherished, that he was bound in **name** and _blood_ to serve.

The disgusting crack of Jarvan’s bones breaking is **deafening**. It’s sickening, it makes his stomach churn violently, and Jarvan’s pained howl that rings through the air makes his own heart break a thousand times over. It is the worst, most gut wrenching sound, like angels crying and dying in fire and wisps. It is the only thing Garen can hear at the moment.

Garen screams. His cries out _desperately_ , wildly, shoving aside the body of a soldier that stands between him and his charge. A ravenous, monstrous ache begins to fester in him as he watches an old nightmare come to color before his eyes ( it was such an old dream; Garen had stopped seeing it so long ago, but now it has come to remind him in reality ). He calls out to his friend, his prince, his old heart and in doing so he rapturously throws his own soul out into the wind as some sort of life line to pull that which he cherished back to him.

Another body blocks the Might, heavy metal pauldrons being driven into his stomach and instantly Garen’s hand clutches the Noxian soldier’s throat in a vice grip, crushing mercilessly as he drives his sword through the man’s stomach and throws the body aside. Garen does not care to look at his face, he doesn’t care. All he can think of is Jarvan. He moves like a barreling storm, parting the seas of war with his own maelstrom.

Garen screams to the heavens, to his fate, to his friend. He is forced to watch from merely feet away as the Hand of Noxus forces Jarvan’s lance out of his hands, and he witnesses as the man becomes the Guillotine.

“ ** _JARVAN—_** ”

It is not enough. He watches as Darius’s axe comes down like retribution and war to split the crown prince’s chest open ( it’s grotesque, it’s violent, he doesn’t know if Jarvan is suffering through it or he has already died ), and Garen howls in pain as if he had been the one struck. He calls out to Jarvan again, and he crashes against the falling body like a collapsing wave of the sea.

Garen is too late this time.

Jarvan’s eyes are glassy and there is blood pouring from his open mouth by the time Garen falls to his knees over him. Instantly a violent grief bursts within him to ignite the first fires of utter ruin in his soul. This is a face he had seen in his dreams, when he was haunted by a ghost of his friend, when he thought he had lost that which he loved so dearly. There was no bravery he could reforge himself from this time, he could not bury himself under his people and rise with them on his back as a testament to persevere. He could not be reborn as Atlas. This time— This time Garen was with Jarvan when they marched into battle, and this time he **_failed_**. He truly and wholly _failed_ , he had watched with his own eyes as he disgraced his name, his purpose, his country. A Crownguard that did not die before his King was not _worthy_ of the name. The wound that was opening viciously within his soul, tearing further and further open with each breath he took, ached all the more because above all he had lost his friend. Garen had banished one with his own lips and now watched as his only other die before him, ripped from his hands by another that he had come to love. He failed in every way. He was to blame for this death, this true death, and he committed **treason** by loving the executioner of it.

The most unexpected, and **tragic** love he could ever feel.

The waves of him still, almost ominously, but it a false respite. Black waters in an ocean storm are still a warning— _a promise_. He is the most hallowed silence before the storm returns with a vengeance, with enough ache and torment to drown everything around them, to leave himself as a deserted isle. Garen’s soul will leave his body here while he lives on only physically; he’ll haunt this battlefield.

Garen raises his head to look up at the man who made him realize and live in truth his greatest fears, his oldest heartache— He looks up at his lover. With reckless abandon Garen rises to his feet, a vicious cry ripped violently from his throat without any sense to the noise. It is deep and raw, a testament to the fissure of agony that was ripped open in his own chest by the man he loved ( all he lacked was the scar; Jarvan’s body was the only physical bearer of such a wound ). His voice is a cry forced from him as he drowns within himself, the mountain of his soul crumbling into the sea to be lost to it. Saltwater flows in through his cracks, tearing his heart apart, until all he wants is for it to rip his throat apart like paper and burn his scars and heartache as it flows endlessly from him.

The Might is stripped of all his grace and pride; he pushes endlessly. His jaw aches from how tightly he holds it but that is nothing compared to the **chaos** that is born in his chest ( Garen had never been able to live and move in chaos; it ravages him until he’s nothing but feral heartache ). His steps are messy, they’re heavy and unyielding; he throws himself against Darius but it’s impossible to know if it is an act of devotion, betrayal, or a man’s wish for death as his foundations are shattered. Darius could have killed him, too, _he should have_. The deepest, most intimate form of heartache in him wished Darius would.

Darius continues to meet his blows the same way cliffsides let the ocean howl in pain against them. Their unending presence is a comfort, their silence and unmoving stance is crushing. At the moment, Garen is too wrought with rage and agony to understand the gravity in this act. A day from now, this will swallow him whole and drag him down in a bottomless pit of guilt he’ll never crawl out of. Five years from now, when he haunts his own body, it’ll shake him to his core.

Garen wanted to cry out to him, he wanted to drop his sword and hold Darius’s face and ask him _why_ ( he knew why, but he still needed to ask, he still needed to hear it ). Had he not given enough, had he not surrendered **everything**? Garen had opened his chest and let the wolf devour his heart, given him his lungs tied together with twine, offered his ribs as gifts— and he had accepted long ago that he would die for that. The first time Darius kissed him he had accepted the reality of their doomed affair. He gave himself in entirety, all his silver and saltwater, all his light, because Garen only knew how to give in totality. There was no half measure, no half love from him.

He did not fear death; soldiers must not fear death. There was no opportunity to fear death, especially not when he had come to love such a man as Darius. Garen was fully prepared for the hand at the small of his back to be replaced by the end of his lover’s axe someday. Every time he kissed the Hand of Noxus it tasted only sweet for as long as the duration of it; every time they parted their hands, their lips, their nights, he was left barren and empty, waiting to serve his sentence for the wiles of his heart. Garen had surrendered a life of happiness and content, he laid his throat in the maw of the wolf because that is what their love demanded. Garen would have died to Darius without regrets, without shame; he was prepared to do so.

He was not prepared for this love to demand another’s life as payment for their sins.

Darius doesn’t strike him in return. He pushes, but it is not the same, there is no heavy black metal being driven into his body and that hurts, too, along with all of this. It makes Garen equal parts frustrated and tormented. If he had a voice that wasn’t the hollowed cry of a wounded animal he would ask the man why he doesn’t fight him like he should, like the equal forces that they were. His expression is hard and difficult to read, as it always was, but his eyes are piercing and in full witness to the destructive ruin Garen was becoming.

It’s not pity, men of their making don’t pity one another, but there’s an ember of remorse in his eyes and that makes Garen feel like he’s drowning, too. It makes his pain that much harder to bare ( it touches the trembling, tender, and raw part of him with a softness he doesn’t want but needs at the same time ). They were not allowed regret, if they did then their love wouldn’t have lived, anyway— but one could only deny themselves so much.

Jarvan had not been an easy man to kill, and perhaps that could be why Darius doesn’t fight Garen with all he has to offer. There’s a deep tear in the flesh of Darius’s upper arm, his blood free flowing from it like a river. The flesh is marred and Garen’s isn’t sure if he can even lift that arm. The unspoken between them in turn is that they know one of them will die in this fight, but fate remains a cruel shackle that forbids them their last fight being on equal terms. There is no real victory to be had here.

Fate and the world they are born into also does not allow them to part. Garen’s loyalty is a noose around his lover’s neck now, and the thunderstorm of rage and anguish is left with only the feeling of drowning in sorrow. Garen doesn’t realize or know when his eyes began to burn, but they do, and again his sword strikes the heavy armor of the Hand of Noxus.

There is no grace to their movements, to this battle. This is a moment where the sea rolls over the scorched earth to take the ashes of their ruin as a memento of their end. Garen’s sword falls heavily against the broad side of Darius’s axe once more while his bleeding arm hangs painfully at his side. Darius can’t feel his fingertips in that hand anymore. He only pushes enough to force the Demacian back, and with an expression muddled with both pain and anger, the Might does not relent. His sword meets the other man’s weapon again, but this time he draws near.

The torment in Garen’s features is evident and he contorts in so many painful, vivid ways that were almost **unnatural** for him. His jaw is clenched and teeth are bared, his cheek is stained with blood ( whether it is his own or Darius’s, he does not know ) that merged with the wet trails of his tears. He is nothing like The Might right now, he is not the Captain of the Dauntless Vanguard, he is the farthest thing from a paragon. In this moment he is only Garen Crownguard, the man who loved his antithesis, the man whose lover killed his best friend— and all of that tragedy ached so _tremendously_ throughout him. Like everything before, Darius is witness to this, to all of him, all of the ruin made of him. This, too, this grief he gives to the wolf and lays his hand there to be taken with it.

Garen inhales deeply, his chest swelling with the effort as he tries to collect himself into some semblance of the man he was before this battle. He is little more than the shattered pieces of a marble statue held together with only plaster and blood, but his pride demands he try, and what remains of who he was wants to offer something kinder to Darius. This is their last moment, and that realization breaks his heart all over again. He had never wanted to say their farewells like this, he didn’t want to make Darius witness him break in the most sacred of ways. Even with blood in his mouth he wanted to kiss him and give him something kind as his final farewell.

His hands clench painfully tight around the hilt of his sword, they’ll likely be rubbed raw of skin when he finally leaves this place. He swallows, his lips purse as he tries to mold himself back to silver and light, his features shift painfully throughout grief, guilt, and anger. This, too, is a kind of death where one is forced to bury their soul in the body of another.

For Darius, more than anyone, he felt he owed his strength. It was a matter of pride and a virtue of respect that he could never articulate or feel for another; it was theirs and theirs alone. Darius did not love him for his weakness ( or, at least, that is what he tells himself now and that is what he wanted to believe ). As his final offering, he presents the shattered ruins of his heart, of their love.

“Despite all of this, I loved you,” he says in a voice made raw and rough, “ _I love you, still_.”

The sounds of war in the distance are akin to the low rumble of tides coming in and out. A cruel, mocking quiet is given to them, as if to illuminate their suffering. Darius looks upon him with an expression that Garen was only allotted to see when their secret could be indulged in. Bitterness spills like ink over his memories of their affair, of Darius, and he swallows it desperately to try and salvage something that will keep him warm.

“And despite it all, I love you too,” Darius answers solemnly, almost gently.

Garen’s last chord shatters in him, as tragic and sorrowful as the single note of a harp. He inhales again, clenching his jaw tightly to keep from letting his sorrow pour violently from his mouth. The sea and all her ill tides thrash violently between his ribs but he does not want it to spill over his lover’s skin, to taint them further.

Darius’s words are both what he wanted and dreaded to hear. They strike a single, lonely, tragically comforting ripple throughout his soul that is gentle compared to the storm he felt. Garen had almost wished for Darius to reprimand him, to chide him for being romantic at a time like this, to call him a fool. He had lost count the number of times he had professed his heart only for his lover to take it with fire, to remind them both that they _shouldn’t_ ( but then Darius would kiss him, or he would tell him he loved him, too ).

Instead, Darius relents just enough, and that makes the agony and guilt in his stomach overwhelming. It reaffirms the finality of what is to be of them. Love, in the wake of such ruin and devastation, burns against the tender, open flesh of him. Garen Crownguard wants to reach out and hold Darius’s face and press their foreheads together, to hold him against his body, to selfishly feel their love, but the Might of Demacia cannot.

Garen doesn’t regret this, but he does grieve it.

In this ending, he too will relent, and he will sorrowfully take what is offered to him.

Garen reaches up and presses his palm to Darius’s cheek, the ocean blue of his eyes shifting endlessly and vividly with all that he felt. They were an island in this battle, in this war, a war that was too old for them to know— perhaps history would not forget them, but it would never know that despite all the odds they had found something to be loved. It was the most quiet kind of tragedy. Garen would bury himself with Darius here, and right now, staring into that tired, deep red of his eyes Garen would leave his soul with him. It is the last thing he can offer to his wolf.

“Good bye, my heart,” he whispered, his voice soft but worn and rasped just as they both were.

Garen draws his hand back slowly in acceptance of their end. His body feels dreadfully heavy and tired as he does so, like he’s moving with lead in his bloodstream and chains coiled around his arms. Darius’s arm lowers and his axe slips through his hand until it meets the earth, lodged deep in the blood stained soil as he stares into the deepest parts of the Demacian. Garen doesn’t dare look away from him. There is a depth in his eyes that will haunt Garen’s dreams painfully, until he’ll wake with a bitter taste in the back of his throat and the burn of tears swelling at the corners of his eyes. Garen tries to memorize it, anyway. He wants to burn this into his memory, into his heart, he wants to engrave their love into his skin and brand himself with Darius’s hands. It’s selfish, and he knows that, but may the gods forgive him for it anyway.

He stands as still as a motionless sea when Darius’s hand raises and brushes his cheek with a tender touch, a stark contrast to the war around them and the violent grief that Garen had waged against his lover not long before. He stands painfully still while his heart trembles in his chest and his breath quakes throughout his throat. Garen inhales shakily once, and allots himself a moment of weakness to lean into the last piece of tenderness offered to him.

There is no ceremony in the deed. He breathes in once more and stands as tall and proud as he can make himself for both his own pride and for Darius, and as quickly and kindly as he can, he drives his greatsword through his lover’s chest. Garen forces himself to watch Darius’s face as he does so, never willing to break the last tie between them, and he watches as light fades from his eyes in order to drain with the rest of his blood. The back of his throat burns with salt and iron as he watches Darius die.

There is nothing kind in death, there is nothing beautiful in it. It is not poetic.

Darius’s heavy, armored body finally crumbles against him, his mountain finally breaks into nothing and the rocks tumble into the sea to be swallowed forever. Darius drowns alongside his Atlantis. Garen buries himself in the same body, casting them both out to the sea of tragedy forever.

He struggles to wrap his arm around the Hand of Noxus in order to pull his sword out, but he manages with as much care as he can. Even in death, he still respected the man for all that he was. His sword falls to the ground unceremoniously, clattering like a painful reminder against the axe that still stood wedged into the ground. Garen holds his body, his chin pressed awkwardly against the metal and cloth of his armor, but he cannot allow him to simply fall to the earth as another dead soldier. Darius had been so much **more** than that.

Carefully, _gently_ , he lays the man down as his own last act of tenderness. He imagines Darius would perhaps tell him his sentimentality would get him killed, too, but he can only stand so strong and so resolute after his world is left in ruin. Did he not deserve this, was he not at least owed this one act of mourning? Perhaps not. He knows better than to ask that, they both did, but Garen takes it anyway.

He kneels beside the body of a man he knew in life as a soldier, as the Hand of Noxus, and as his compliment. Darius had been his other half in every sense of the word. With an ill-fitting reverence for a dead enemy, Garen lays his arms at his side and pulls the axe from the earth and lays it next to him. He lingers only a moment longer to close his eyes, his finger tips gracing cold skin before he bows his head to the Hand of Noxus one final time.

Garen rises to his feet with his sword in hand, but he feels cold and empty. He has died here, too. He laid what remained of him to rest alongside Darius.

A light without his shadows was blinding, a moon without his sun would never shine again.


End file.
